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Friday, 28 October 2011

UnReality: Closing Statement

I am going to close this project with my conceptual statement from the portfolio hand-in. I feel it sums up what I took away most from the project, and what I think it conceptually demonstrated best. The journey itself went well and We all were pleased with the final outcome.

I wasn't really a major part of the technical aspects of the project, nor did I play a major role in the experience itself come time of the event, but thanks to my team-mates everything went smoothly. I would work with any one of you again in the future without question.

Good Run. Hope our players had as much fun as we did. "A detailed outline of why
your group chose this reality including reflection on group dynamics,
philosophical and artistic inspirations, theoretical frameworks
utilised etc.

With our
latest 'Unreality' project we were tasked with the creation of an
alternate reality ‘journey’.

It
became clear early on in the concept stages that as a group we were
looking at producing a narrative which held our 'players' hands and
guided them through our alternate reality. Immersion was going to be
a key aspect of our journey, not only did we want to create a
fundamental story, but we wanted to create the feel of an entire
living breathing world behind it. We wanted to offer an
'experience', -one that was memorable and affected our players. As a
group we wished above all else, to make our story believable, If we
truly made our players forget that this was a work of fiction, we
would have achieved our target of building a truly weighted alternate
reality.

To this
end we arrived at the concept of submerging players in a world that
parallels our own, run by a totalitarian regime, and plagued by
political unrest. Our core theme was the battle between obedience
and free-will. We drew a lot of creative inspiration from similarly
themed works of fiction such as George Orwell's novel '1984', and the
movie 'Equilibrium' directed by Kurt Wimmer. In hindsight these
contemporary works shone through our own narrative quite
substantially, however when dealing with common themes such as 'theft
of human 'emotion or creativity' or 'life under constant surveillance
from a disembodied higher power, it was always going to be hard to
steer entirely away from the aforementioned works of fiction.

This
battle between free-will and obedience would be what drove the
majority of the project. Once we were past the concept stages,
developing this theme was the point of interest that kept us as a
group moving forward in the same direction. Group members were
strong in favor of having player choice involved in the project. Once
talked over it was apparent that giving players the decision to
choose right or wrong, good or bad would increase the interactivity
of the journey but may not necessarily add to the level of immersion
we all aimed for. Instead we found a happy medium, we offered
opportunities to our players to change their path without giving them
a fork in the road. Instead of implementing a black or white
decision, we created a constant morally grey area for the players to
dwell in for the best part of thirty minutes. It was this approach
that posed the questions to our players -Are you in favor of going
along with your orders from start to finish? Or are you prepared to
risk consequence for what may be the better thing to do. Who are the
'good guys' and 'bad guys'in this situation? This was a decision
that had no concrete answer, but the choice was there for players to
make their own internal decision.

The
notion of surveillance was also one that lent itself well to our
framework, as it allowed us to impose on our players a feeling of
anxiety. While they were being guided through their deceptive tour
of the city we tried to demonstrate that they were being not only
watched but analyzed. That they were being tested. By removing
their control of the situation, and limiting the amount of
information they were given in advance, we aimed to essentially
confuse our players.

Confusion
itself is a powerful tool when creating an alternate reality. Whilst
treading the fine line between a structured lack of understanding,
and complete discord, players we felt would be submerged in a
survival situation. Nothing prompts drastic change (such as
believing you have been transported to an alternate reality) like
necessity. We realized that this confusion had the capacity to
hinder our journey, but hope that it instead added to the experience.

Dealing
with these themes, and the nature of violence in political unrest (We
may have been affected ourselves by the current 'Occupy' protests)
our journey took a slightly darker, more nefarious undertone than we
had originally anticipated. This again hopefully supplemented our
key goal of immersion' rather than distracting the players throughout
the experience."